Sermon
preached by St Clement’s,
Chorlton-cum-Hardy Proverbs 8.1-4,
22-31 |
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| Today is the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity. Most clergy find the Trinity difficult to preach on, and avoid it like the plague. When I was in Staff Meeting down in Wythenshawe earlier this week, one priest said that she’s already made a conscious decision to avoid preaching on the Trinity. And, indeed, there are volumes of confusing and conflicting academic literature which attempt to explain the Holy Trinity: Three Persons yet One God. The Holy Trinity is not a Biblical concept, but definitely identifiable in the Bible, and the theology of the Holy Trinity was derived from that. There are three (of course) notable instances of the Holy Trinity that I can think of off the top of my head. The first is the Baptism of Jesus, where the Spirit descends on Him like a dove as the Father’s voice is heard saying, “This is my Son with whom I am well pleased.” The second is from last week’s Gospel reading in which Jesus Himself invokes the Father and the Spirit in relation to Himself and to our life, work, ministry and faith. The Third is a back-projection of John’s Prologue referring to God the Son as “The Word” of the Father onto the first Creation story, which has led to the general acceptance of Genesis 1 beginning with God the Creator, who sent a wind from God (the Holy Spirit), and then spoke in order to create, which was God the Son. This is reflected in the Creed. Three persons; One God. Anything
else is heresy. But how does that work? Here’s the micro-short
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It is heresy to say God is three different ‘guises’ or ‘manifestations’, and we don’t even have adequate words in English to describe the ancient Greek words used when the doctrine of the Holy Trinity was being developed! hypostasis is translated as ‘substance’, which in English, itself is inadequate. I just realized that there is someone in the congregation who has a 1st Class Honours Degree in Theology from Cambridge, actually TRINITY College, Cambridge,and he might completely refute everything I just said, so let me stray away from academic theology, and attempt to put some meaning into the Holy Trinity for our lives today. When I was thinking about the Holy Trinity, I realized that the One God shares Himself with us in different ways:
While thinking about that, I wondered how God’s sharing of Himself with us related to how we are to live lives of faith in an increasingly pluralistic and complicated world with our own complex and busy lives. I realized, then, that all throughout the Gospels and the Letters in the New Testament, there are stories, instructions, accounts of and so on in which people share themselves with one another or are instructed to share as a part of their expression of their faith. This brought forth the question: Are we to share ourselves with one another in return for, or offer ourselves to one another as an offering to, that which God has shared, does share, and will always share of Himself with us? Over the last three years, we have shared with one another. In one-on-one visits with many of you:
Our lives have been shared in ways that cannot be taken back or retracted. I am now part of you, and you, each and all, are part of me. In recognizing that, the Holy Trinity begins to make sense in a more practical way, rather than in an academic theology way: God shares Himself with us, and therefore cannot but be a part of us. He has shared Himself with us:
But it has all been One God. God has shared Himself with us, and is a part of us. So it stands to reason that, as we share ourselves with one another and become part of one another, we share a part of God with one another. As the youngest of four siblings plus two step-siblings, I had no choice but to get good at sharing things, or my brother would sit on me until I broke wind…which was not the mighty rush of wind as at Pentecost! I might not be the best at sharing stuff about myself or who I am. But I have tried in my vocation as a priest to share of myself as a means to journey alongside each and all of you toward an encounter with the Divine, with God. For me, the primary way of encountering God is through the Eucharist, and my calling to priesthood has always been centered around that, centered around sharing with you what is most profound and deep to me.
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Over the last three years, I have written about various personal things in the magazine, discussed my love for food and wine with you at coffee hours, and shared with you in sermons a bit how that is connected with my theology and connected with the Eucharist and the expression of my faith. As I have a few times before, today I bring to you bread that I have made with my own hands and wine that I found when I was in Tuscany last week. In a sense, I bring some of myself in the bread and wine today. You know that I am not a good bread maker, but want to try in order to share. You know that I love wine, and when I was in Tuscany last week, I came across Vin Santo, meaning Holy Wine. It is a specially-made wine, which is used as a very special digestive and also as Communion wine throughout Tuscany. Sharing with you bread made by my own hand and wine discovered on my own sojourns in the context of the encounter with God in the Eucharist is the deepest form of sharing I could possibly conceive for my last Sunday with you here. As I have said before, it may seem a humble offering, but theologically, spiritually and personally, there is a lot in it for me and from me. And there’s one more bit about the you and the me and our lives borne out with the Trinity. In the magazine article which preceded my priesting, I wrote about how a priest differs from a lay person or a deacon in that a priest imparts God’s blessing upon people. That is a profound distinction for me, and it is something of sharing. The Church has determined, over the centuries, that the work and office of a priest is some sort of distinct order that is set apart for blessing God’s people. It has been an intense and overwhelming aspect of my ministry to bless others. Likewise, though, because God the Holy Trinity is bigger than we can imagine, I believe that collectively, through the Priesthood of all People, you, by the Grace of God, have imparted God’s blessing upon me.
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Sharing with one another is the living out of our life in God the Holy Trinity. And in three years, you have shared with me, and we have shared with one another. Our faith is not to be kept to ourselves, we cannot be kept to ourselves. God shares Godself with us; so to be people of God, we must share ourselves with one another, with those whom we meet, with those who are in need, for that is what God has done, is doing and will always do with us. If we are made in the image of God, then God can be shared with and by others through us and through others. Our journeys of faith should always be ones of seeking and sharing. The Most Holy Trinity may be a difficult concept to understand, and the many different analogies that have been made in many a bad sermon are all wholly inadequate. But we cannot deny that:
God has shared Himself with us in so many ways we cannot count them, in ways so deep that we will spend the rest of our lives discovering God within us. God spans time and space, and sharing with one another and becoming a part of one another means that our connection, also, spans time and space, when rooted in God the Holy Trinity. Let us share an encounter with God in the Eucharist this morning, and then continue to share with each other, discovering the God within one another, enriching our lives, strengthening our community, building up the Body of Christ, knowing that though we are many, we are one Body, because we all share in one Bread. Amen. |
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